


Ephemera

by apollos



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Western, Alternate Universe - World War II, F/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 00:35:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17151974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: Death breaks the veil between worlds.(Neji is alive. He is alive, but he is not where he should be.)





	Ephemera

0.

Neji is alive. He is alive, but he is not where he should be.

 

1\. [ _lucky_ ]

It is spring. He can tell by sporadic cherry blossom blooms and the birdsong and the bees buzzing on the flowers by the bench upon which he sits. He is in a park, though no park he has ever seen. Everybody is wearing civilian clothes; children are playing games, shooting a ball into a net, laughing and yelling. A woman walks by pushing a toddler in a stroller and talking on what looks like a radio by her ear. In the distance, Neji sees very tall buildings, made not of wood but of concrete, but those are as far-off and insignificant to his vision as mountains.

"I'm so sorry I'm late," comes a familiar voice. Neji turns his head. Hurrying down the path, in the opposite direction of the woman pushing the stroller, is Tenten. Her hair is down, over her shoulders. She is wearing a pair of black slacks that sit above her hips and a button-up white shirt, tucked into the slacks. Her lips are painted. She's holding two steaming paper cups. She hands one to Neji; instinctively, pushed by something outside himself, he takes a sip. Tea. Tenten's smells like coffee.

She sits beside him on the bench, very close, their thighs touching. She does not seem to think about it. She keeps talking. "I had that meeting, you know, and Anko was being  _such_ a bitch, saying that I couldn't  _possibly_ handle the case, I'm too inexperienced. Well, how am I supposed to  _get_  experience, then, if not through this case?" she laughs, and Neji laughs, too. A weird hatred of Anko, whom he has given very little thought to previously, surges forward. "I'm sorry—how was your day?"

"Usual," Neji says, taking another sip of tea. His free hand finds Tenten's free hand and holds it between them. Looking at them, he sees two matching rings on their fingers. "I ran the numbers on the deal Hiashi wishes to close on for the fifth time. They're still sound. He's making me do it a sixth tomorrow."

"Ridiculous!" Tenten says, laughing again. Neji smiles. He doesn't know from where he got that answer, but he knows it's the right one. "When will he learn to trust you? He's leaving the company to you."

"It's probably because of that," he answers.

"Yeah, I know." She rests her coffee on her thigh—he feels annoyance, because he's told her not to do that so many times, it will ruin the thin material of her slacks—then settles her head on his shoulder. His annoyance goes as fast as it came, now smelling the familiarity of her shampoo and, beneath that, her skin, herself. "Look at us, complaining. I got the case anyway, and you're the heir of a multimillion dollar company. We're so lucky."

"Yes we are, Tenten," he says into her hair, watching the children play soccer on the field, the strangeness that had overtaken him fading. His thoughts are not fully in the moment—he's thinking of any other way to possibly run the numbers, to get Hiashi off his ass, and if they have enough food in the apartment at home to assemble a dinner, they've both been too busy to go grocery shopping recently—but he does know, still, that they are lucky, lucky indeed.

 

2\. [ _picture_ ]

Neji lifts the curtain to the room with one arm and, with the other, undoes his hair. He still has not shaved it, and he knows she prefers it unbound, over his shoulders. She tells him it's so soft, softer than even her own, sometimes it makes her envious, that she wants it all to herself. She understands the duplicity in her words.

She is on the bed, her own hair pinned up, her back to him. He pauses as he sets his shoes down and admires the slope of her shoulder, down to her waist, up to thigh, down again. Her kimono has fallen off her shoulder just so, enough to be enticing. He thinks of paintings he's seen passed around in seedier places, of women like this, and he understands. He would never, however, betray her, to put her in picture that way.

"Neji?" she asks. The bell tones of her voice ring the bell of his heart, and he practically floats his way to her, kneeling at her side.

"Who else but me?" he asks her, placing a hand on her hip.

She rolls over and smiles at him. He sees a brief, strange instance of her face transformed before him, smeared with mud and blood, her hair in twin buns, a navy band around her forehead, one of her teeth missing. He feels as if stakes have been driven through his chest, multiple, and he collapses onto her lap.

"Neji!" she says again, hurrying to sit them both up.

When he looks at her, he forgets what he had seen, what had happened. "I'm sorry—an attack," he says.

"It's okay." She wraps her arms around his shoulder. "Come to bed. You'll feel better."

 

3\. [ _shoot_ ]

He sits at a table across from Lee, sipping a foul-tasting liquid. He knows the liquid, he's familiar with it, and it's making his belly and throat warm in a way that he knows he should hate but he actually likes. It's alcohol, but not alcohol he knows—except clearly, he knows it. His head starts to spin. Must be the liquor.

"I'm  _telling_ you," Lee is saying, banging his fist on the table, red high in his cheeks. Neji knows he's going to spend another night looking after his friend, knows they should stop coming to this tavern. He knows, too, why they keep coming to this tavern, and he's keeping a surreptitious lookout, but he hasn't seen her yet. "I killed three of them. Three!"

"Sure you did, partner," Neji says. He takes another drink. As he puts his glass back down, he sees her. Sees the ruffle of her dress, and her braids down her back. She's in profile; he begs her, silently, to come to their table.

She does, of course. It's her job. She takes Lee's empty glass and puts it on her tray. "Hyuuga," she says to him. He loves that little bite in her voice when she says her name.

"Tenten," he says. The alcohol's working, because then he says, "When are you going to let me give you a last name?"

She laughs, loud and long, and he knows she laughs like that at every marriage proposal she gets but maybe, just maybe, this laugh is genuine. A difference in tone. He's done a lot of thinking about it. "Soon as Lee here learns to hold his liquor," she says, pointing at him with a rag from the table.

"Aw, come on," Neji says, too drunk and, more importantly, love-dumb to come up with something better.

She touches the back of his hand, enough to last him for months, when he goes out on the next cattle drive. "Teach me to shoot," she says, "and I'll marry you."

"Deal's a deal." He smiles at her. "We could go out back right now."

He knows she'll learn to shoot better than he ever could. He knows he's okay with that, too. He knows that when he watches her leave, in a few months, he'll be watching her walk right back over.

 

4\. [ _wartime_ ]

A very small, cramped apartment, a crying child half-forgotten in a high chair. Neji opens his eyes. He knows not how long he has been asleep for, but it's too long—the child throws a toy down from the high chair, the sound lost among the din of other tenants through the thin walls, of the radio with the war reports. Neji rubs at his eyes and sits up. He's on a couch. His hair is short; he runs a hand across the back of it.

Tenten emerges from another room, running a towel through her hair. "I  _told_ you to watch him," she hisses, genuine spite in her voice. "And you fell asleep."

"I'm sorry—I've been working so hard," Neji says. "I'm so sorry."

Tenten throws the towel off. It lands on a chair. She walks to the highchair and scoops the baby, who is very fat with Tenten's round brown eyes, into her arms. "Daddy didn't mean to," she tells the infant, petting his bald head.

"I'm so sorry," Neji says. It's all he can say. He gets off the couch and collects the towel, going into their bedroom to deposit it into the hamper. His bones ache, he has been standing all day, laundering. He is not sorry only to Tenten, but to himself. Regret fills his chest, hard to swallow. He should not have married her. He could not have predicted the future, but he should not have married her.

Tenten comes into the bedroom and places the baby in its crib. Neji walks to her, puts his arms around her waist. She sighs. She smells good, clean.

The radio drones on.

"If my father hadn't died," Neji says.

"It doesn't matter," Tenten says. He knows she's right.

Neji watches his son fall asleep, wonders what life he’ll grow into. Wonders about the ubiquity of war, throughout time, throughout worlds—


End file.
